Meta Platforms Experience Widespread Outage; Facebook, Instagram, and Threads Inaccessible For 2 Hours

By Thea Felicity

Mar 05, 2024 03:20 PM EST

(Photo : Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images))
A photo taken on November 17, 2023 shows the logo of US online social media and social networking service Facebook on a smartphone screen in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany. Tech giants Meta and TikTok are contesting the scope of an EU law that from March will set new rules on competition in the digital marketplace. The European Commission has designated 22 big online companies as "core platform services" to be subject to additional scrutiny and obligations under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) aiming to crack down on anti-competitive practices. The list includes familiar brands ranging from social networks Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, to so-called "intermediation" apps such as Google Maps, Amazon Marketplace and Apple's AppStore, to operating systems iOS, Android and Windows and Google Search.

On Tuesday morning (Mar. 5), a significant outage hit Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, leaving users unable to access these popular Meta-owned platforms for approximately two hours.

Users encountered various issues, such as being automatically logged out of their Facebook accounts, inability to refresh Instagram feeds, and error messages when trying to use Threads.

The Meta apps outage was widespread, with reports surging on platforms like Downdetector and NetBlocks highlighting its global impact.

Interestingly, WhatsApp, another Meta-owned platform, seemed unaffected and functioning normally.

Meta's Response to The Outage

Meta promptly acknowledged the issue on its status page, indicating that engineering teams were actively addressing the problem, with gradual service restoration reported by midday.

"We're aware people are having trouble accessing our services. We are working on this now. ," said Meta communications head Andy Stone on X.

According to The Verge, this incident parallels a similar outage in 2021, when a configuration issue caused Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to be inaccessible for several hours.

Meanwhile, users are expressing their concerns regarding the vulnerability of large-scale digital platforms to technical disruptions while Meta apps were down on X.

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